parents. She was pleased by my manner and appearance: she did not wish
her adopted daughter to be the child of peasants. She asked me for no
references,--made no inquiries. She said cordially that she wished for
no knowledge that, through any indiscretion of her own, communicated to
the child might lead her to seek the discovery of her real parents. In
fine, I left Coblentz on the understanding that I was to bring the
infant, and if it pleased Madame Surville, the agreement was concluded.

"I then repaired to Aix. I saw the child. Alas! unnatural mother that
I was, the sight only more vividly brought before me the sense of my own
perilous position. Yet the child was lovely! a likeness of myself, but
lovelier far, for it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness. And they
told her to call me 'Maman.' Oh, did I not relent when I heard that
name? No; it jarred on my ear as a word of reproach and shame. In
walking with the infant towards the railway station, imagine my dismay
when suddenly I met the man who had been taught to believe me dead. I
soon discovered that his dismay was equal to my own,--that I had nothing
to fear from his desire to claim me. It did occur to me for a moment to
resign his child to him. But when he shrank reluctantly from a half
suggestion to that effect, my pride was wounded, my conscience absolved.
And, after all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any
motive for tracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen nor heard
of him more. I took the child to Coblentz. Madame Surville was charmed
with its prettiness and prattle,--charmed still more when I rebuked the
poor infant for calling me 'Maman,' and said, 'Thy real mother is here.'
Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof I had quitted,
and shortly after became the wife of Ludovico Cicogna.

"My punishment soon began. His was a light, fickle, pleasure-hunting
nature. He soon grew weary of me. My very love made me unamiable to